Pitt Bar links

Spreading the Word to Improve Public Health

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One of Pitt’s missions is getting health information and
resources out into the community for use in fighting diseases and developing
policy.

Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH) researchers
undertake large, multi-year studies to gather information about health issues.
Among these are the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures—ongoing since 1986—and the
Osteoporotic Fracture Risk in Men Study, both led by epidemiology professor Jane Cauley. She also leads GSPH’s new
National Children’s Study, which seeks to recruit 100,000 children nationwide
for a study of the effects of genetic and environmental factors on growth,
health, and development.

GSPH’s
Steven Belle is principal
investigator of the data-coordinating center at the Hepatitis B Clinical
Research Network, a Pitt-coordinated consortium of 15 clinical and research
centers in the United States and Canada. A seven-year, $11 million grant from
the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases will
enable the network to establish a multi-site
treatment trial, create and maintain a database of study results, and store
tissue and serum samples for clinical research.

In 2009, at the beginning of the health care debate, the
Institute of Medicine of the National Academies asked Sally Morton, chair of GSPH’s Department of Biostatistics, to join
a group of experts creating a list of the top-100 problems in health care effectiveness
that researchers needed to address. Morton had previously recommended creating
an autonomous organization to evaluate the effectiveness of health
interventions; Congress took her advice.

Other GSPH projects address public health less directly. One
is Fractracker, a Web site that compiles research related to natural-gas
fracking and the health effects of Marcellus shale gas drilling. Fractracker was
developed by GSPH’s Center for Health Environments and Communities.